CHOOSING, AND REFUSING

Joe Stenhouse

Joshua 24: 15; Luke 10: 38-42; Hebrews 11: 23-27; Philippians 1: 21,22; 3: 7-11

You will have noticed that these scriptures speak about choosing, and, with Moses, refusing. God was the first that chose, choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world. What a wonderful thing! Who could comprehend it that we are here today as persons who have been chosen for God's pleasure. All things were created for His pleasure - it says, "for thy will they were, and they have been created", Rev 4: 11 - and you and I come into that. We do not always realise what is proceeding at the present time: there is something here that is for God's pleasure. Though there are the temporary pleasures of this world, God is proceeding with His own world for His pleasure, a world which is eternal. I feel, speaking to believers, that tonight could be a time when you could make a decision.

Joshua is a man who had come a long way, over the Red Sea and through the wilderness, and he was here in the beginning of the inheritance. It says that "these things happen ed as types of us" (1 Cor 10: 6), so that he would be an example for us. He had come all that way. (I think if you add them up we are told of 42 encampments in the wilderness). He came through the failures when Moses had to pitch the tent far from the camp because of the molten calf, and when the people had said of Moses "we do not know what is become of him!", Exod 32: 1. (We know what has become of our Man). It says that they "sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to sport" (v 6). What we believers can come to if we have not kept in the light! The Lord would use this occasion, I am sure, to help us to come to a good decision. Joshua says "choose you this day whom ye will serve ... but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah". One man is speaking to perhaps two million people; and that is all he is saying. Everything we come into in Christianity initially we come to as individuals. These were individuals who chose. They made a good choice. It is the greatest choice you could ever make. Wherever you have been and wherever you are at this time the Lord is ready to help, He is waiting to bless you and help you. This is an occasion when you could say "but as for me and my house". That is a word for those who have a house. Everyone present is not a head of a house, but there are many ways in which we can serve the Lord. How lovely it is to find in our houses that the Scriptures are read, that prayer is made, that there is what is proper to a believer's house. It is delightful to heaven to look down upon.

In Luke Jesus entered into a certain village. We could say that we are in a certain place here tonight. In this village there were two sisters. I would like to apply the scripture in relation to what they may represent in each one of us. Is what we are fostering or making room for, what marked Martha or what marked Mary? We can all be marked by the features of Martha: she was adjusted and we can be adjusted too. But I was thinking of Mary; it says she "has chosen the good part, the which shall not be taken from her". That is what we need, something that cannot be taken from us. That is what we find as listening at the feet of Christ. If you listen, you learn. We ought to be listeners at the feet of Jesus, to compose ourselves; there is such a thing as self-control. You can control your mind by the Spirit: it is something that should mark every believer. These things are not to be thought of as exceptions, but they are to be normal with us. Martha says "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?". I am sure that Mary would have done a bit around the house too, but while the Lord was there she was in a position that had priority with her over other things. You can be taken up too much with your house, but the Lord Jesus is to have priority if we are to have the satisfaction and the joy that He wants us to have. He has to have the first place in all things. One day, as we sang earlier, He will have it in the universe, but now He loves to have it in your heart and mine, and in our establishments and whatever we have in our hands. Let us make more room for Him. He says "careful and troubled about many things": at the feet of Jesus these cares and troubles find their solution in Himself. He says, "Mary has chosen the good part". It is not just the better part; there is no comparison: it is "the good part". Why not choose it today? The Lord wants a company of persons like this, and in our individual lives He wants this. He has gone the way He has gone in His love to secure you and me. "Mary has chosen the good part, the which shall not be taken from her". It is wonderful to have something in Jesus that can never be taken from you, because it is eternal.

Hebrews was written to believers who had had an earthly inheritance and it tells them of a heavenly inheritance, an unfailing one. Moses had all the opportunities for the things of this world and he chose - "choosing rather to suffer affliction". Life is not going to be all sunshine, as we say: the thing is to choose "rather to suffer affliction along with the people of God". It is not to be compared to the bondage of Egypt. When the children of Israel loathed the manna they forgot about the bondage and the taskmasters and the slavery of Egypt. I wonder if there is anyone here like that who has perhaps forgotten what that bondage was. Let this occasion bring you back to a fresh realisation of the wonderful deliverance that you once enjoyed. Here Moses had come to a crucial time in his life. I would like to say to the younger ones here - there was a time when your parents baptised you to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit. It was called upon you and now the Lord Jesus is saying tonight to you through the word that, having come to the age of responsibility when you choose things for yourself and are responsible for them, are you going to choose to suffer affliction with the people of God, beloved young brother or sister? There are the temporary pleasures of sin; everything is temporary down here except the work of God in persons. One day it is all going to make way for a new heaven and a new earth: those of the assembly will have new bodies in another world.

Meantime it is a great privilege to choose to suffer affliction with the Lord's people, "esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches". It is worth more than all the pleasures and treasures of this world. Mr Darby wrote 'Tis the treasure we've found in His love, that has made us now pilgrims below' (Hymn 139). That is what it does, it makes you see that the glory of this world is just tinsel and hollow. Get a glimpse of the glory of Jesus. It says "for he had respect to the recompense", that is real treasure; you have recompense now because you are able to enjoy even natural things in a proper way as governed by the Spirit and by Christ but the Christian has his heavenly portion too.

And so it is said, "for he persevered, as seeing him who is invisible". Do not look around for encouragement. You might get encouragement from the brethren, but the secret of endurance is that you are living by faith - a wonderful thing; you are not looking at things around you, you are looking up, you are looking above. Everything that maintains the believer down here comes from above. Jesus is the source of it. He came down from above. He was not like Adam, made out of dust: He was a divine Person who came down here from above. What we need to maintain ourselves day by day comes from above: we need the living bread and the living water every day. Do you get it? If you do not get physical food you become weak and lose power. You need the spiritual every day. You are strengthened by what enters your constitution and you must have living water and living food every day.

In the first chapter of Philippians Paul says, "for me to live is Christ, and to die gain; but if to live in flesh is my lot, this is for me worth the while". I like that "worth the while", it is the only way to live that is worth the while. Paul did not know which way to choose - "and what I shall choose I cannot tell". Whether it was one way or the other it was still worth the while. If he was left here, he would have his service to do for the Lord; if he was to depart to be with Christ, that was much better. But it was still good to be left here, it was "worth the while". It will be if we live as he did. He says, "for me to live is Christ". He speaks of counting all those things which were gain to him filth. They are not the things he was speaking of; they were good things; he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees and he had a place amongst men, educated at the feet of Gamaliel. Do you know what that did to him? That education did not prevent him being a persecutor of Christ. When he was brought to the feet of Jesus it made him the greatest lover of Christ.

In chapter 3 it says, "on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus". We had an advertisement in our mail box before we came down here; it had big letters; 'The knowledge that will do you for a life time' - advertising an encyclopaedia. That is not good enough; we need knowledge that will do us for eternity, and we have it in the living and abiding word of God. It speaks in the Scriptures of the high-flown words from men and how they fall to the ground continually. Paul has seven desires here. He says, "that he may gain Christ", and yet he had been converted for quite a while, but he wanted to gain Him. He then says "that I may be found in him ... to know him". You might say as to Paul, he was converted on the Damascus road and he was spoken to and yet here he is saying to the Philippians that he wants to know Him. Speaking simply, if you know a person and have a certain acquaintance with them, you do not necessarily really know them, but Paul said I want to know Him. Then he says he wants to know "the fellowship of his sufferings". You will always have that; Jesus said, "in the world ye have tribulation" (see John 16: 33). That is not all it says: "in me ye ... have peace". The believer in the gain of things is more than a conqueror all the time. "Being conformed to his death" - do not be conformed to the world. Paul says, "if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead". As we said earlier as to life, you are a recovered person and you are down here for Him. You have been something else, and we have all been some thing else, and yet we are to be recovered for the pleasure of God and for the satisfaction of Christ.

I leave the word with you that you might say "as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah".

ADELAIDE

14 April 1990

CHILDREN AT HOME

It was between the two evenings of the Passover that the children among the people of Israel would all have been expectantly in their own homes in Egypt. Thus between dusk and nightfall the blood of the lamb would have been put on the doorposts and the lintel of each house. The sacrifice itself would be eaten so that all would be ready to leave for ever the place of their bondage. From all this the Christian believer understands that the blood of Jesus is a shield from judgment, and feeding on Him will keep us free in our consciences and in our spirits.

There may well have been boys and girls in the household of the jailer at Philippi. Such would wonder what had awakened them so suddenly in the night; perhaps they would wonder even more when their father began to lay the table for a meal with Paul and Silas - and perhaps some converted prisoners as well. Salvation, the great Christian blessing, would come to all who believed on the Lord Jesus. Paul went a second time to Philippi, on a homeward journey, the next port of call being Troas. Christians there with their children had become so endeared to the apostle that when he had to leave they all prayed together, kneeling down upon the sea-shore.

The epistles of John all refer to children and even little children. These 'love-letters' give an impression of the way in which the Christian path was being trodden by believers, before we come to read the Revelation with its austerities. The second epistle is especially interesting as carrying greetings from one family to another who were their cousins. Expressions like "walking in the truth" are mentioned by the apostle as what was normal for believers. Is this true of you?

J.C.Evershed